


Pasts and Pastimes

by Tierfal



Category: Doctor Who, Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:05:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no such thing as a calm day for the Doctor, but there are certainly days much calmer than this.</p><p>Prompt was: <i>an SPN/DW crossover with Cas as the Doctor, Sam as his companion, Dean as Jack, and Gabriel as the Master</i>.  Oh, boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pasts and Pastimes

**Author's Note:**

> WELL… Eltea made me do it. ♥

“Dean,” the Doctor says.  “We have the entirety of the ever-expanding universe.”

“So?” Dean says.

“We have the indescribably distant extremes of that universe’s timeline and everything in between.”

“Yeah,” Dean says.

“And you want to go to a _concert_ ,” the Doctor says.

Sam covers a cough that sounds suspiciously close to a laugh.

“We’ve been through this,” Dean says.  “It’s not _just_ a concert.”

“That’s true,” the Doctor says, adjusting one of the console dials.  “It’s not, for instance, the premiere of ‘Don Giovanni’, or a parlor gathering with a young and rather less touchy Beethoven; nor is it an early performance by the Beatles in a dive bar before Ringo Starr was anything more than a figment of a stage name—”

“Here we go again,” Dean says.

“Ringo’s my favorite,” Sam says, stretching out on the jumpseat.  “Partly because he’s never anybody’s favorite, and partly because he was on ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’.”

“No,” the Doctor says, louder, “it’s a concert by a band that can’t even spell their own moniker.”

“You are a _special_ kind of evil,” Dean says.  “You know that?”

“He doesn’t mean that,” Sam says as the Doctor frowns.

“Whatever he _means_ ,” the Doctor says, “if he keeps talking to me like that, I’m going to leave him on an asteroid with an oxygen tank and a canteen.”

“I could get up to a lot of trouble with an oxygen tank and a canteen,” Dean says with an unambiguous wink.

“I am aware of that,” the Doctor says.  “Abandoning you is one thing; condemning you to boredom is another.”  He frowns a little more.  “Are you going to be nice?”

“C’mon, Doctor,” Dean says, leaning against the console and grinning, “you know better than anybody that I’m naughty straight through.”

Sam does an elaborate gagging pantomime.

“Perhaps you should get an examination to be sure it’s _all_ the way through,” the Doctor says.  “How about New Earth circa five billion CE?  Excellent diagnostic tools.”

“Must like cats,” Sam says cheerfully.

“We’ll drop you off at the hospital,” the Doctor says.  “And collect you in a thousand years or so.”

“I’d pine for you,” Dean says.  The beaming grin loses a bit of its luster.  “I mean, I’ve got personal experience there.”

The Doctor frowns.

And then the TARDIS goes haywire.

And then the ship pitches and sways, hurling the Doctor into one of the coral struts so hard that he thinks he can hear the music of the spheres, which, whatever Dean says, does _not_ sound like Led Zeppelin.

And then the Doctor wakes up with his face smushed into red grass.

The double-time pounding of two pulses in his head is distracting, but he forces his eyes to focus on the closest blade of grass.  It looks like a shard of garnet.  This cannot _possibly_ be real.  There’s impossible, and then there’s Doctor-impossible, and this— _this_ —

His neck protests as he raises his throbbing head, and there is a person standing over him, silhouetted against the burnt orange of the roiling sky.  This can’t be happening.  This mustn’t be happening.  Please let this not—

“Eh,” the Master says.  “What’s up, Doc?”

“No,” the Doctor says.

“It’s not really a yes-or-no question,” the Master says, “but my thorough stalking of your recent behavior indicates a pretty strong trend of _stupidity_ , so I guess I’ll let it go.”

“How?” the Doctor asks.

The Master quirks an eyebrow.  “Aren’t _you_ the picture of eloquence?  I swear, you just get cuter every year.  If you wanna ruin the magic, I terraformed a perfect facsimile of Gallifrey.”

The Doctor is having too much trouble breathing to worry about the sudden monosyllabacy of his vocabulary as he chokes out, “ _Why_?”

“What do you mean, ‘why’?” the Master asks.  “Some people knit; some people engineer dynamic geographical reconstruction.  Why do you jaunt around the universe helping kittens out of trees?  Because you _can_.”  He shrugs.  “I suppose, in your case, there’s also the pathological compulsion to lengthen as many infinitesimal lives as possible in a Sisyphean quest to reconcile the guilt that underlies your textbook savior complex.”

The Doctor stares up at the Master, who stares unperturbedly back.

“Did you _practice_ that?” the Doctor asks.

“Terraforming takes a while,” the Master says, faintly crabbily.  “ _Anyway_ , then I reversed the polarity of the neutron flow—”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” the Doctor says, levering himself up onto his arms.  “Neutrons don’t have polarity; that’s why they’re ca—”

“It’s _your_ technobabble,” the Master says.  “I was just throwing it back into your face as part of a general volley of mocking witticisms.”

The Doctor goes back to staring.  That’s easier.

The Master pauses another moment for objections before he continues: “And then I deftly executed a few paradoxes in order to carve an extremely unstable miniature Rift, which snapped your TARDIS to the temporal inconsistency like flakes of lead to a magnet.  Aren’t you _proud_?”

The Doctor coughs feebly.  “Perhaps you should have taken up knitting after all.”

The Master is not impressed.

“Where are Sam and Dean?” the Doctor asks.

“ _Oh_ ,” the Master says.  “Don’t fret your pretty little head; your pets are safe.  Or dead.  I forget which way I designed the whole thing.  Honestly, being dead is the only real way for morsels like them to be safe from the likes of us—as I’m sure you and your various streaks of psychological damage know.”

“That’s not very nice,” the Doctor says.

“Are you new around here?” the Master asks.

The Doctor heaves himself up to his feet and looks the Master in the eye. “Where,” he asks again, “are Sam and Dean?”

“Where do you think?” the Master asks. He pushes his sleeve back and flips open Dean’s vortex manipulator. “You’re not getting this thing back,” he says, “just by the way.”

Concentrated energy ripples palely around him, and he winks just before he disappears into the ether.

“This is not funny,” the Doctor says into the open air.

At least the trick isn’t too abstruse. The Master loves nothing more than subjecting others to mental, physical, and emotional suffering; and he has several bones to pick with the Doctor these days. Nowhere is it more difficult to consider the present state of things than whilst hiking up Mount Perdition towards a diorama of the past.

The Doctor pushes the door open and hesitates only for a moment before he crosses the threshold.

“I believe your father’s house had another window in the front,” he says.

“As usual,” the Master’s voice replies from the direction of the library, “you don’t know anything.”

“I know that you’re lonely,” the Doctor says, heading towards the sound. “And bored, I suppose, but for you the two seem to be very closely intertwined.”

“Now, now,” the Master says as the Doctor turns into the hall. “I was downright _charitable_ in my psychoanalysis of you.”

The Doctor steps into the library. It’s—perfect. It’s identical down to the last cracked leather, gilt-lettered spine. It is the room he walked out of centuries and centuries ago but for…

Well, but for the fact that Dean and Sam are each handcuffed and seated in one of the armchairs, and the Master is lounging against the back of Sam’s and polishing off a Mars bar.

“Doctor!” Dean says, and the flashbulb intensity of the roguish grin still feels like a fist to the stomach even after all this time. “So when I said I wanted a repeat of you, me, and bondage, this kind of wasn’t what I had in mind.” His eyes widen before the Doctor has untangled the tongue-knot that has filled his mouth. “He took my VM, Doctor. He _took_ my _VM_.” Dean cranes his neck to glare at the Master. “If there is a scratch on my baby when I get her back, come hell or hepatitis, I will _end_ you.”

The Master looks at the Doctor. Slowly the Master’s right eyebrow arches while his mouth remains a thin, flat line.

“We’ve been over this, Doctor,” the Master says. “They’re called ‘standards’, and you should get some.”

“Hold up, buddy,” Dean says. “It’s called ‘sex’, and you should get some—maybe then you wouldn’t be such a huge freaking douchewaffle.”

The Master looks at the Doctor as he remarks, “How _cutting_.”

The problem is that, while he doesn’t have a point per _se_ , he does have a slightly sharp and tapering item of contention. In Dean’s personal timeline, it has been two years since their fumbling one-night stand—long enough for the razor edges of the awkwardness to have dulled to amusement; long enough for the stunted conversation of the morning after to have blurred into nothing more than words; long enough for nostalgia to have shaded the wilted weeds rather rosily indeed.

For the Doctor, however, it’s been two weeks.

This is precisely why he made a rule never to sleep with Time Agents. And for Dean, for _Dean_ , he broke it without a second thought.

It wasn’t the only rule he broke for Dean; _Never sleep with a traveling companion_ and _Never sleep with anyone who eats in bed_ fell too that fateful night.

“Listen to me,” the Doctor says to the Master.  “Whatever it is that you’re angling for with all of this attention-getting nonsense—”

“That _said_ ,” the Master says, “evidently your taste isn’t completely shot.”  He drops the candy wrapper unceremoniously to his father’s beloved Invarrian carpet and lays his hand on Sam’s head.  “I _like_ this,” he says.

On one level, the Doctor understands: Sam’s hair is the color of milk chocolate with caramel highlights, and it shines like a tiger’s eye and flows like silk.  The temptation to touch it is fairly compelling.

On the other thousand-and-some-odd levels, this is _not acceptable_.

“You can keep this one,” the Master says, stroking contentedly while Sam flushes and then squirms.  “Or, better yet, let _me_ keep it.”

“Okay, dude,” Sam says, wriggling against the confines of the handcuffs and trying to duck his head out from under the Master’s hand.  “First of all, personal boundaries.  Second, I’m not an ‘it’.  Third, _get your goddamn hands off me_.”

“Oh, it _does_ talk!” the Master says.  “Say ‘yes, Master’.”

Sam demonstrates what Dean calls his ‘bitchface’.  “Fuck you!”

“Maybe if you’re very good,” the Master says, patting Sam’s cheek.

The Doctor frowns and pushes his hands into the pockets of his coat.  “Stop that.”

“Bite me,” the Master says.  “Really do; I like that sort of thing.”

“Jesus,” Sam says, although Dean looks distressingly intrigued.

“Leave him alone,” the Doctor says.  “This is your last warning.”

“Before _what_?” the Master asks.  “Are you going to go all Oncoming Storm at me?  I’m so _scared_ of your precipitation patterns.”

“You made a mistake,” the Doctor says, and he darts a glance at Dean and earns a flicker of the brown-gold-olive eyes and an almost imperceptible nod.

“Did I _indeed_ ,” the Master says, rolling his eyes and twirling his finger into a lock of Sam’s hair.  “Let me guess—I underestimated the power of _friendship_.”

“Well,” the Doctor says, “no.”  He meets Sam’s gaze and blinks rapidly four times, which is their code for _RUN_ , and then faces the Master.  “You used handcuffs instead of rope.”

He applies his thumb to the button of the sonic screwdriver in his pocket, and the locks on both pairs of cuffs immediately click open.

Sam hurls himself forward, and Dean leaps to his feet and punches the Master in the face.

The chaos, as always, resolves into the three of them stampeding down the hall.  The Doctor grabs a sleeve on either side and hauls them around the corner, down the stairs, through the glass doors of the conservatory—

He was banking on the Master’s meticulousness—on the recreation being perfectly complete.  He gambled their escape on what he remembers; he bet their freedom on the hope that the fastidious attention to detail and the twisted sense of humor would intersect.

They did.  The Master set the Doctor’s TARDIS precisely where the family’s used to be.

“In!” the Doctor says.  “In, in, in!”

“Up, up, and away!” Dean says breathlessly.

“Gotta say,” Sam pants, “I’m starting to like the running.”

Dean snorts and holds the door.  “Easy for you to say, Stilts.  You’re built like a freakin’ Tim Burton reject.”

“Screw you,” Sam says as the Doctor sidles in.

“Later,” Dean says, and slams the door.

The Doctor pushes past them, twirls the timeline dial, and releases the parking break.

“Jerk,” Sam says.

“Bitch,” Dean says.

“ _Language_ ,” the Doctor says.

He hauls the lever that operates the warp drive, and they rocket off in the general direction of Anywhere.


End file.
